17 April 2013 11:33 AM

The MMR - a Reply to Some Critics

I reproduce below a long (and rather snappish) attack on me, published by Michael Ward, a person I’ve never met (but who seems to dislike my views on illegal drugs) and much-posted on Twitter. I am responding to it because the ‘Times’ columnist and BBC favourite David Aaronovitch, who has pronounced that I am ‘wrong’ on the MMR subject, but cannot say why despite many challenges to do so from me, seems to be relying on this document as his justification.

Therefore the author of it has had the misfortune to have become a proxy for Ex-Comrade Aaronovitch. David is a former enthusiast of the late unlamented Communist Party of Great Britain, and has not, as far as I know, devoted much time to repudiating his past affiliation to the Party of Brezhnev and Andropov. He was also (to me unsurprisingly, as both projects were utopian, globalist, self-righteous, deluded, dishonest and violent) a keen supporter of Mr Blair’s idiotic and disastrous war on Iraq. A number of other people have also claimed that Mr Ward’s essay ‘demolishes’, ‘dismantles’ or ‘takes down’ my position. People often say this sort of thing, when what they mean is that they agree with my critic. This is one of those occasions, but because the MMR issue is still so important, I feel it necessary to respond where I otherwise wouldn’t bother.

… the essay is illustrated by a picture of me rather sheepishly holding a rifle in a gun shop in Idaho, taken during the 2008 Presidential election campaign. What this has to do with the subject of the MMR, I have no idea. Heaven knows there is no shortage of unflattering pictures of me (or indeed of accurate ones, which may be the same thing) on the web. So why this one? Could it perhaps be there to predispose liberal-minded readers against me? After all, guns are evil, are they not? So if I am holding one, I must be too. The author, I note, displays a picture of himself looking like a really cool dude, shades and all.

Then there are the puerile and unfunny jests about football, and the mystic, grandiose claims of the scientist to be the only person worthy to discuss scientific matters. We’ve had this out before. I yield absolutely to scientists on matters in which they are expert. But I see no reason why they should have special privileges in any argument which can be expressed in unspecialised terms. They have no special powers of logic, and their facts are just as easily examined as anyone else’s. And it seems to me that, in matters of the human heart, I know a good deal more than my critic has managed to pick up in all his ‘scientific’ life.

For instance, were I arguing that Dr Wakefield was right, or the MMR was dangerous, I would need to show my qualifications before doing so. I’ve no doubt my critic would prefer me to do one or both of these things, and it often seems, in his denunciation below, that he thinks I am doing so. But I am not. That is why he so furiously muddies the waters, with righteous rage and a didactic, overbearing manner, to try to give the impression that I am, and perhaps to persuade himself that I am..

His essay (including quotations from me) is almost 6,000 words long. As my own argument is clear, as it actually concerns the liberty of the subject and the freedom of the press rather than science, as I haven’t changed it in 12 years and as my critic in fact offers no evidence that I am factually incorrect or logically at fault, I won’t try to respond at the same length (though the whole thing is reproduced below for those who want a ready reference. Some people on Twitter have joked that the Internet will run out of electrons if this goes on).

I will instead try to explain what I think this is really about, and why it gets people so worked up.

The issue is, at heart, about the relation between the individual and the state. Is the state over our heads, or beneath our feet? Do we serve it, or does it serve us?

This was my main objection to the plan for identity cards (which had many practical justifications, some more convincing than others, none over-riding). Its introduction would have changed the relationship between the individual and the state, for the worse. Instead of the state having to justify its existence and presence to us, it would have been the other way round. This has terrible implications for freedom, the presumption of innocence, the powers of the police and the government. To a former Communist Party member (such as Mr Aaronovitch) or to any conventionally wise left-winger, I don’t imagine these things are particularly worrying. But they are to me.

What I find most striking about my critic’s response is that it could have been written by a machine. It contains not the faintest scrap of human sympathy for the parents who were unhappy about letting their children be given the MMR.

It also contains no scrap of understanding of what press freedom involves. The press must report such things as Dr Wakefield’s press conference. There is a risk that such whistle blowers may be wrong, but an equal risk that they may be right. Suppression is no answer to this conundrum. One of those who warned correctly about Thalidomide later raised concerns about another drug that turned out to be safe. But had he been right, and majority medical opinion is often wrong and governments are often wrong, and civil servants are often wrong, then he would have been a hero, loaded with honours.

I won’t , because it would take too long, list all the many newspaper stories about this controversy. But I might draw my critics’ attention to one in the ‘Sunday Times’ of 3rd August 1997 ‘Crying shame of the vaccination victims’, which mentions that the then Health Secretary, Tessa Jowell, took the ‘scare’ so seriously that she called a meeting of concerned parents and scientists to discuss it. What are the media supposed to do in such circumstances. Shut up? Or cover the story? Actually, the Daily Telegraph, the Independent. The Times, the Guardian, the London Evening Standard all reported extensively on it. The defence of the MMR by the authorities was fully reported in the Daily Mail. Why then did the worry spread? Well, because parents did not know who was right, and erred on the side of caution.

Sarah Boseley asked in ‘The Guardian’ of 3rd June 1999 that ‘Why then, in the face of all the evidence the scientific and public health communities can amass, does anybody worry about the safety of the MMR vaccine? Basically, because there is no longer the sort of trust in the scientific and medical community that once existed. Not only have they sometimes got it wrong, but their mistakes, thanks to newspapers and the media, have been widely disseminated. We are distrustful of drugs that may prove addictive or damaging to our health or our childrens'. The scare over GM foods is just the latest episode to reinforce our suspicion. It does not help that scientists are usually reluctant to speak out and criticise their colleagues. 'It is very difficult. People don't like to criticise people who are respected and employed,' said Dr [Mary]Ramsay [a consultant in public health medicine at the Public Health Laboratory Service]. And since government pronouncements are viewed with equal suspicion, it is left to each individual parent to decide whether the likes of Dr Wakefield are mavericks or lone radicals who have discovered something disturbing that we really ought to think hard about before we take our child to the vaccination clinic.’

And once doubts exist about a treatment, then it may take a long time to settle them. Whether my critic likes it or not, the question was still controversial in 2001, or why did the Blairs refuse to reveal their decision at that time (which he himself admits was a grave error), and why did their refusal attract such attention? The controversy was still in being in 2004, when Dr Wakefield and several colleagues retracted part of the 1998 paper. The General medical Council did not begin proceedings against Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues till July 2007. ‘The Lancet’ did not retract the 1998 paper until 2010. People don’t necessarily believe official reassurances. It is annoying of them, no doubt, but it is an important part of a free society that they are entitled to act in ways that the government doesn’t necessarily like. His repeated assertions that the controversy was over by 2001 are just that, assertions. Had it been so, then the withdrawal of the single jabs would not have led (as it has done) to the large gaps in immunity we now find.

All I am saying, all I have ever said, is that it would have been better to allow parents to give their children the single vaccine on the NHS, rather than abruptly withdrawing it. Many were so concerned that they spent precious savings or travelled abroad to obtain this vaccine. What kind of dolt refuses to recognise this strength of feeling, and seeks to bully those who suffer it?

When Andrew Wakefield’s original paper was published single vaccines were licensed in the UK and readily available to the British public. Andrew Wakefield recently wrote that though MMR vaccination uptake definitely fell after February 1998, use of the single vaccines rose. But in September 1998, the British government withdrew the importation licence for the single vaccines, leaving parents with the ‘MMR or Nothing’ option.

Andrew Wakefield says that when he asked the Health Protection Agency why they had done this, they responded, ‘...if we allowed parents the choice of single measles vaccines it would destroy our MMR programme.’ He says ‘The government's concern appeared to be to protect the MMR programme over and above the protection of children.’ Is this not a valid criticism?

The lofty statist may despise the parents who wanted the single vaccine and went to great lengths to obtain it for their children. My critic here compares them to people who ‘hear voices’, a nasty sneer which is a good example of his lack of generosity in argument or his willingness to see people as individual humans rather than as pieces on a utopian chessboard.

The whole core of this argument is that I do not share this view. I understand the urgency of their worry, and see them as trying to do the best for their children. In a way, his strange statement that Thalidomide was ‘safe – for the person taking it’ is most revealing. The ‘person taking it’ is the mother. The person damaged is the child of that mother. What sort of mechanical mind is it that can separate the two? By the way, the dangers of Thalidomide were exposed by ‘maverick’ scientists, William McBride and Widukind Lenz. Frances Oldham Kelsey, in the USA - another ‘maverick’ - withstood powerful pressure from a major drug company to license Thalidomide.

Now, I’m quite prepared to believe and accept that the single vaccine is less effective than the MMR, even though I think the evidence for this is pretty slender and the difference probably rather slight. One argument offered by the state is as follows :’Single vaccines imported into this country have not been independently tested for potency and toxicity - we have evidence that some of the single vaccines are less effective or less safe than MMR.’ ‘Some of’ means ‘not all’. Well, that difficulty would easily have been resolved by the NHS continuing to supply the single vaccine under its own control, and ensuring that those used were of good quality.

The parents who were worried were in my experience responsible and thoughtful people who would not have sloppily failed to follow through with appointments, as is always alleged against them.

But even if all these allegations are true , these parents were simply not prepared to let their children be given the MMR. So the real choice wasn’t between the MMR and a less reliable single vaccine. It was between the MMR and nothing, thanks to the dictatorial rigidity of the state, which offered no other choice. My critics on this matter never acknowledge this truth, or deal with it. They swerve round it, again and again and again and again. This is because it is true and unanswerable. His response to this point is not to challenge or rebut it but to claim he cannot understand it, call it ‘perverse’ and splutter abuse about ‘idiots’ and ‘rigid minds’. The reader will not generally notice that, as this spittle-bomb noisily explodes, the actual point at issue is not addressed. I’d go further. I’m not even sure Mr Ward, carried away by the surge of bile flowing through his mind at this point, knows he hasn’t addressed it. Well, he hasn’t. I don’t blame him. It is, for him and his side, insurmountable.

Anyone who has the faintest human sympathy, and who regards his fellow-creatures as individuals with feelings and minds, rather than as numbers , would have known immediately that the effect of offering this false choice would have been what it was. A very large number of families simply did not have their children immunised. I said at the time, and repeated it when it happened, that if and when there was a measles epidemic, it would be the fault of the rigid, machine-minds of the government.

Of course, in an authoritarian state (which I suspect some of these people would prefer) the children would simply have been seized by the authorities and jabbed against their parents’ wishes.

No doubt this would have achieved the ‘herd immunity’ (the phrase speaks volumes about the authorities’ view of us) which the state desires. But for me that is too high a price to pay. Is it for my opponents? Let them say.

In my view, the false choice of ‘MMR or nothing’ was a failed attempt at coercion. It failed because it was authoritarian, rigid and unfeeling, as are the author of this attack on me and his supporters.. They are angry because it failed, angry with the annoying human fallibility of the people who will not do as they are told by the almighty, benevolent Big Brother state. They are also angry because a free press is still prepared to give publicity to whistle blowers and dissenters from orthodoxy (who by their nature cannot always be right, but will be sometimes, and then it be really important that they are heard) and snarl at this freedom as ‘irresponsibility’. Well, too bad. Freedom is irresponsible, by its nature. That is why Thomas Jefferson wrote it into the American Bill of Rights, because he knew that the cold, marble minds of the governing class could never grasp this.

A compliant, obedient silence and the nervous suppression of all doubt would be much, much worse.

For the authoritarian, the only thing wrong with this was that the attempted coercion failed, and was not complete. For the lover of liberty, unmoved by utopian claims that the kindly state guarantees our health (which it of course does not, leaving us to die of thirst in puddles of our own filth in ill-run hospitals), it is wrong in principle.

A few notes. My critic’s comparison of worried parents with delusional mentally ill people tells us more about him than he meant to say. He doesn’t deal with my point that the authorities and their media patsies nowadays exaggerate the danger from measles, though they do (though not as much as they exaggerated the risks of AIDS or VCJD, which, if the authorities had been right about its cause, would by now be a deadly mass pandemic). He himself says that measles *causes* various nasty complications. It would be more accurate ( and a good deal more ‘scientific’, I should have thought) to say that it *can* cause them. Mostly, it doesn’t.

Also, please note an interesting contrast here. The terrors of measles are played up and in my view exaggerated. But when I raise the horrors of regressive autism , my critic says ‘the terribleness of it is irrelevant to whether this terrible thing was caused by MMR’. I have a feeling this is what is called ‘having it both ways’.

This is typical of the medical totalitarian approach, in which the benevolent state claims to protect us from all kinds of terrors, in the hope that we will like it more. The same technique, of exaggerated danger, is used to get us to support wars. It’s easy to see why Ex-Comrade Aaronovitch, the would-be conqueror of Iraq, is keen on this cause.

I doubt very much whether immunisation could ever certainly reduce measles death rates to zero, not least because of religious objections to vaccination and to the unavoidable existence of people who were (for instance) taking immuno-suppressant drugs and so unable to be immunised. I’m also interested to know if he thinks that the Dutch fundamentalists who refuse all vaccinations should be compelled to change their ways, or allowed to choose. He says confidently that the two children who died in Dublin would have lived had they been immunised. Really – when one had this terrible malformation, rather likely to be fatal in any case, and the other was, in effect, starving? In any case, we do not know for certain that they had not been immunised.

He accuses me of the ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc (‘x follows y, therefore x is caused by y’) fallacy in my discussion of the Edwards family. This is proof he has not read what I have written, presumably thanks to the usual red mist of fury that so many of my opponents suffer when confronted with views different from their own. I am most careful to say, specifically, that Josh’s suffering, appalling and worrying as it is, doesn’t prove anything. I’ll leave it at that for now. Except to say that, yes, I have in fact visited the Third World.

I’m asked for my thoughts on the measles outbreak in Swansea. I’m not sure quite why, as most readers here will know my views on the MMR controversy.

I've not been asked for my thoughts on Arsène Wenger, but most of my readers will know my views on him: he should hire Wayne Rooney to play in goal for Spurs. My readers will also know that I know about as much about football as Peter Hitchens knows about science.

Perhaps there’s some intended suggestion that I am in some way responsible for this outbreak, which is also being attributed by some to a long-ago local newspaper campaign against the MMR vaccination. The local newspaper, I should add, says that it covered the controversy fairly, which I have no reason to doubt. I was interested to hear its current editor rather aggressively and righteously questioned on the subject by a BBC presenter the other day.

I think the suggestion is that all ill-informed journalists who've reported irresponsibly on MMR bear some responsibility for the current outbreak.

Longstanding readers will know that I was myself mysteriously targeted, some years ago, by a skilful anonymous letter writer who faked a letter from a mother claiming that her child’s terrible illness was my fault. As it turned out, the woman whose identity the fraud had stolen (and whom I eventually traced) confirmed that no such thing had taken place. Nor, of course, had she written the letter sent to me with her signature faked upon it. The address from which the letter was sent was also a fake, though a very clever and carefully-planned fake which I only uncovered by going to visit it personally, a step the fraud did not think I would take.

The elaborate faking of the letter, the invention of a real-seeming address, the use of an actual name, have always seemed to me quite sinister and unpleasant. And it is things like this, rather than the science of the matter, which have continued to make me question the behaviour of those who petulantly insisted that the MMR injection was the only option for worried parents. I am still astonished that the supposedly beloved National Health Service, every inch of which is paid for by the public, treats the parents of children in this high-handed way. If it is the people’s service, a national benefit, surely its loyalty is above all to those who use it? Is the state our servant or our master?

The fake letter is indeed sinister and unpleasant but was almost certainly the action of a particular individual whose motives we can only guess at. It has no bearing whatsoever on the question on the validity of the National Health Service position that the MMR injection was the only option. The state is our servant, but the mechanisms for providing instructions to our servant are necessarily quite complex and highly regulated. An individual or a group of individuals can't simply demand that the state do whatever barmy thing they've just thought of. I consider myself fortunate to live in a country where this is the case.

If it is our servant, it should sympathise with our fears. Yet, while public money could not, apparently, be used for single jabs, it could be used to pay generous bonuses to doctors who increased the uptake of MMR, and it could be used for propaganda campaigns telling parents that all was well. Yet the Chief Minister of the government which used tax money for these purposes refused to reveal if his own small child had been given the MMR which his ministers and civil servants were vigorously pressing on everyone else.

Depends what you mean by "sympathize". I sympathize with people who hear voices telling them that they have been chosen for a special purpose in life. I don't share their delusions or base my policy towards such people on their delusions. (NB I am NOT saying here that MMR opponents are psychotic. I am saying that their fears have no basis in reality.)

Another of the authorities’ tactics has been to over-rate the importance of immunisation. They suggest wrongly that the main defence against measles is immunisation, when (see below) history shows that it was general improvements in public health, especially in nutrition, housing and the availability of clean water, which reduced the numbers of measles deaths from thousands to a tiny few, before any vaccine was brought into use. Linked with this is a tendency to exaggerate the dangers of measles. In rare cases, measles can without doubt be very damaging. But in most cases it is not. And the rare measles deaths which take place in the modern era tend to involve patients who are already gravely ill or otherwise vulnerable for separate reasons (such as chemotherapy making immunisation impossible).

Given the possibility, also discussed below, that a small minority of patients may react badly to any vaccination, this is an important point in calculating risks.

It has actually occurred to all the stupid scientists who work in the field that medical interventions have risks and benefits and that we need to be sure about where the balance lies before rolling out national programmes. Sometimes, as with some types of cancer screening, it is very difficult to decide exactly where the balance lies and the debate continues. In the case of MMR, however, it is perfectly clear where the balance lies. The benefits far exceed any possible risk.

Before quoting my January 2001 article, I should make a historic point. It was written when the dispute over the safety of the MMR was already in full swing and had not been resolved. I doubt very much if it influenced even one person in deciding whether to give their child the MMR or not. It certainly was not intended to do so. Many parents had already declined the MMR and were unconvinced by official assurances of its safety. They may have been mistaken in this view, but their fears were reasonable at the time.

In March 1998 The Medical Research Council concluded there was no evidence showing a link between the MMR jab and bowel disease or autism. In April 1998, a 14-year Finnish study found no danger associated with the MMR vaccine. In 1999 Research published in the Lancet from the Royal Free Hospital, where Wakefield did his research, found no evidence or an MMR - autism link. The "dispute over the safety of the MMR" was in full swing in the pages of the Daily Mail and other newspapers, but anyone who knew what they were talking about was insisting that the MMR vaccine was safe.

An experienced doctor’s public doubts about the vaccine had been considered so significant by medical journalists and news outlets that a controversy had by then continued for three years (though, as I show below, it goes back even further than that). This is not itself unreasonable. Medical treatments can go wrong. Vaccines can have problems. Should reporters or media suppress such worries? Surely the default position, in a free society, is to publicise them. What if they had been justified, but suppressed?

When one maverick is saying one thing and almost the entire scientific establishment are saying another, then reporters have a responsibility not to suppress anything but to report the maverick views in their proper context. Now that Wakefield has been so thoroughly discredited, there is no excuse whatsoever for journalist reporting his views as though they had any remaining credibility - especially when doing so may result in death or injury to children.

As a parent myself, I sympathised then, and sympathise now with those parents who were worried. It is a very heavy responsibility to authorise an injection, in the fear that it may unpredictably do permanent and irreversible damage. The chance may be very small. The authorities may be saying that it does not exist. But if it is your child, you won’t necessarily be convinced by such words. Any parent will know this. Many non-parents will simply not understand.

So why not find out the facts and use your power as a journalist to help them understand?

I say now what I said at the time and have always said. If the true aim of the authorities was the maximum possible level of immunity, they should have authorised single jabs on the NHS while the controversy was still continuing. My view is that events show that , if maximum immunity was their true aim, they went about it in a very odd way. The predictable ( and predicted) effects of what they did were – as we now know – a significant number of children who were never immunised.

Single jabs are less effective, cause more distress to the children, have far fewer data on their safety, and result in far more missed appointments. Even more importantly, if the authorities had authorized single jabs, this would have given the impression that there were real doubts about the safety of MMR. It is unethical to offer a treatment which has less evidence of safety when a better product with much more robust evidence of safety is available. Moreover, given all the considerations described, it is more than likely that the provision of single jabs would have resulted in fewer children being protected.

It seems to me that what they wanted above all was to get their way. The fact that this involved a number of parents refusing the MMR, could perhaps be blamed not on their inflexibility, but on the wicked media. QED.

It is outrageous to suggest that the medical and scientific establishment had any other considerations in mind than the best way of protecting children.

The current events in Swansea and elsewhere were entirely predictable 12 years ago, and I predicted them. Exhortation and official reassurance were never going to work. A significant minority of parents would not let their children have the MMR, but would unhesitatingly have given them single jabs. Had this happened, there would now be no Swansea measles outbreak, or it would be much smaller (no injection has a 100% success rate, even when given twice, as the MMR is).

Almost certainly untrue - see above.

Here I will reproduce the very first thing I recall writing on the subject, and the earliest of my writings about it that I can find in any archive, which was in the Mail on Sunday on 28th January 2001. It was published under the headline ‘ Is it Really Our Duty to risk our children’s lives with this Jab?’, and it followed Anthony Blair’s refusal to say if he planned to let his small son Leo have the injection, at the height of the controversy over its safety. It read ‘Many mothers would die to save their children's lives, and many would kill anyone who threatened their young with danger. But now they are being asked to risk their own offspring for the sake of others. You may be worried about your own child, say the authorities, but your fears are groundless and actually rather selfish. Be responsible. Overcome them. Trust us, for we know better. This is an astonishing piece of State bossiness in an age that has seen a catalogue of mistakes, panics and mysteries in the world of disease and medicine.

They were not being asked to risk their own offspring for the sake of others. They were being asked to vaccinate their own offspring for the sake of their own offspring. Yes, the world is complicated and some people do know better than you (or me) about all sorts of things. There is, of course, no absolute guarantee than any particular expert in something is right but science is a collaborative enterprise that produces a consensus reflecting the best evidence we have at any particular time. Even then the consensus MAY be wrong, but it's the best source of information there is. The alternative - listening to people who don't know what they are talking about and just make stuff up - is much worse.

They told us thalidomide was safe.

It is - for the person taking it. Unfortunately they didn't test drugs properly for effects on developing embryos in those days. Now they do.

They said that we would all get AIDS.

No they didn't. They said that you risk getting AIDS if you have unprotected sex. You do.

Official advice on avoiding cot death switched from 'babies must lie on their fronts' to 'babies must lie on their backs' with barely an apology.

Yes. Because science - unlike your immutable prejudices - is based on evidence. When new evidence comes in, science changes to reflect that new evidence. That's why science gets better and better all the time whereas stuff people just make up or think doesn't.

The wise person responds with deep caution to the words 'Trust me, I'm a doctor', and with even more caution to the words 'Trust us, we're the Government'.

The wise person either becomes an expert him/herself or puts his trust in the the current expert consensus. The fool places his/her trust on something s/he read in the newspaper.

The same authorities who refuse even to consider that there might be a risk from the Mumps, Measles and Rubella (MMR) vaccine have embarked on a massacre of cattle, and on slaughter and hygiene regulations which have crippled the entire beef industry, when there is still no actual proof that eating BSE-infected meat leads to CJD.

We don't "prove" things in science - you can only do that in maths or logic. We gather evidence and develop well supported theories. There is overwhelming evidence that eating BSE-infected meat leads to vCJD - though vCJD is (mercifully) relatively rare.

But they demand conclusive proof of danger before they will even entertain doubts about MMR. They shout 'bad science' at Andrew Wakefield, the consultant who has persistently raised questions about MMR. Yet nearly half the health professionals questioned by the British Medical Journal say they have concerns about children being given the second of the two required MMR jabs. Surely they, with their long and careful training and education, can recognise 'bad science' when they see it? And what about Tony Blair, who refuses to say if he will follow his own Government's advice when little Leo comes up for his first MMR any day now? If it's so wonderfully safe, why not give a lead to us all?

Yep. Blair's behaviour was indefensible - only valid point in this entire diatribe.

This weekend the triple vaccine is being urged on every parent of small children through a £3million propaganda campaign, mounted at our expense in breezy defiance of unproved but frightening suggestions that MMR could be behind a sudden increase in childhood autism. Most GPs back the Government line, though this may have something to do with the fact that doctors can increase their annual income by £860 if they achieve a 70 per cent take-up of the jab, and by £2,580 if they can reach 90 per cent.

The pressure is strong. If you don't let us immunise your child, says the Government, you could help cause an epidemic of measles. And don't imagine that measles is just a few spots. This is a serious disease which can kill. The Department of Health speaks of the 'devastating brain-destroying impact of measles in young children', known as SSPE, which sometimes accompanies measles.

Yet it is the devastating brain-destroying impact of autism which is so worrying for the parent who hovers at the surgery door, wondering whether to submit a cheerful, healthy toddler to MMR.

There is no proof that MMR causes or has ever caused autism, or the severe bowel disorder Crohn's disease which can lead to brain damage.

Again, "proof" is not a relevant concept here. There is no credible evidence that MMR causes or has ever caused autism, or the severe bowel disorder Crohn's disease and there is overwhelming evidence that MMR does NOT cause autism, or Crohn's disease.

But both of these afflictions have become more common since the triple MMR was introduced in 1988,

A questionable claim, but one that is irrelevant given the detailed and large scale epidemiological investigations which have been carried out.

and they have brought unutterable misery to many families. Heartbroken parents speak of how they have 'lost' their children even though they are still alive. Toddlers who were alert, responsive, full of laughter and recognition, suddenly went quiet, and retreated into an unknown world where they are no longer the people they were or might have become.

It is indeed terrible when such a thing happens to a toddler, but the terribleness of it is irrelevant to whether this terrible thing was caused by MMR.

Imagine wondering for the rest of your life whether you were to blame for such a thing happening to your own child. You cannot know, but you will always suspect. Because the decision on whether to inject or not was yours alone, this would be far worse than coping with the random, unpredictable ravages of a disease. It is an awful choice, and those who must take it need not propaganda, but help.

But why would any parent wonder such a thing unless that parent had been misled by a dishonest doctor and credulous journalists who insist on spreading that doctor's lies?

Why do they not get help?

Why do journalists not give them the help they need - accurate easy-to-understand facts.

Why do parents have to take this decision at all? The alleged autism risk is linked entirely to the joint use of the three vaccines in one go.

A false and thoroughly discredited allegation.

If there is a connection it is possibly because three viruses at once overload the child's small frame.

No! Again, scientists consider such possibilities, and they understand how the immune system works. Three attenuated viruses at once do not overload a child's small frame.

While we find out for certain, why not let worried parents have single vaccines, spread over time?

See above.

The official answer to this is astonishingly thin. Parents are told that huge studies - especially a recent one in Finland - have shown no link between MMR and autism. But the Finnish study, it turns out, was not really looking for any such link so it is no great surprise that it did not find one.

Asked to explain its rigid refusal to leave a loophole for worried mothers and fathers, the Health Department brusquely proclaims: 'The Government recommends the use of MMR because the evidence is that combined MMR is better for children than separate vaccines. There is evidence that separating the vaccines puts children unnecessarily at risk of diseases that have serious complications. Recommendations on MMR vaccines are categorically not based on financial considerations, nor do they aim to deny parental choice. We cannot offer parents the choice of an unsafe and unproved option when a safer and more effective vaccine exists. The Department must make recommendations based on the best scientific evidence and the advice of experts and this is that MMR is the safest way to protect children against these diseases. For this fundamental reason we cannot support the use of single dose vaccines.' Dr Jayne Donegan, a sceptical London GP, says the official position about this is confused and self-defeating. The reason for the current panic is that fears of MMR have led to a severe drop in the take-up, down to levels of 75 per cent, which are not enough to insure against an epidemic. If this is so, she points out, then the urgent task is to get as many children immunised against measles as possible. By making the single measles vaccine available easily in this country, the Government could get levels back up to 90 per cent. Even with a six-month gap between jabs, toddlers could then be immunised against the more distant dangers of rubella and mumps within less than two years.

And she asks: 'Why is it safer to give them together?' It is true, she says, that the old Berna-Rubini single mumps vaccine had a poor record. But there is no reason why the new and effective Jerryl Lyn mumps immunisation could not be given on its own. However, you cannot readily get it here except as part of the MMR.

See above.

The Department's fierce statement that the single-vaccine alternative is 'unsafe and unproved' does not seem to be founded on much, and an unkind person might well suspect that this assertion was 'bad science'.

There are far fewer data about the safety of the single-vaccine. This is good science.

Dr Donegan used to be an enthusiast for vaccinations of all kinds, but experience has turned her into a doubter. She believes that the medical establishment is in the grip of an intolerant orthodoxy that will not listen to questioning voices.

But does she have any real evidence for her doubts or any support from the rest of her profession concerning her opinions about "the medical establishment"?

'They think that people who question the vaccine are socially irresponsible. If I say anything critical about vaccines it's as if I were saying that God was dead.' Certainly an act of faith is required. The claims of an MMR risk have not been proved, but nor have they been disproved. There is no reason for either side to be certain, and every reason to be cautious, especially if the future of a tiny child is in your hands. Yet the use of emotional strong-arm tactics comes just as much - if not more - from the pro-injection lobby as it does from the antis.

See "proof" and "overwhelming evidence" above.

Are their scares valid? The MMR enthusiasts make much of recent measles epidemics in Ireland and the Netherlands which involved several thousand children. Dr Donegan says measles is indeed deadly if it attacks badly nourished children living in dirty conditions, or if it affects those who are already seriously ill. She says most health improvements, even the ones credited to vaccination, are really due to the march of civilisation. In an advanced country with clean food and water, fresh fruit and vegetables readily available, and modern, spacious housing, she believes measles is unlikely to be fatal for healthy youngsters.

What Dr Donegan believes is irrelevant. There is ample statistical evidence about how many otherwise healthy children are likely to die or become disabled in a measles outbreak.

Normal, fit people can suffer severely or even die from measles, but such deaths are rare. The Netherlands recently suffered an epidemic in the country's rural 'Bible Belt', where vaccination of all kinds is frowned upon. There were three deaths among the 3,300 who caught the disease. One two-year-old had underlying heart problems, but the two other victims, a three-year-old and a 17-year-old, died from measles complications.

And those three children would be alive today if their parents had vaccinated their children.

The two measles deaths in Ireland's epidemic last year suggest that Dr Donegan has a point. One of the victims was a 12-month-old baby girl from a very poor family living in grim conditions on a large Dublin housing estate and was, incredibly for a European capital in the year 2000, malnourished. The other was also exceptional and seriously ill before he contracted measles. He was a two-year-old with a severe malformation of the throat which linked his windpipe with his oesophagus and who had to be fed by a tube let into his stomach.

And those two children would be alive today if their parents had vaccinated their children.

The Irish epidemic also revealed another unsettling fact for the 'MMR at all costs' lobby. At least ten per cent of those who developed measles had been given the MMR jab. One in ten is a pretty high failure rate for a treatment that is being pressed on the public as a great social duty.

The failure rate is less than one percent for children who get both MMR jabs. Even if it were lower, herd immunity would protect the unprotected children.

And it is that idea of social duty which really lies at the heart of this argument. The lofty view that 'the health of the people is the highest law' seems to have shoved aside all other thoughts. The authorities, who take more than a third of our income in taxes, are not delivering very much that is good or laudable in return, as the NHS decays into Third World conditions.

Have you ever visited the Third World?

They are anxious to prove to us that they are still benevolent and good: the abolition and defeat of diseases is one of the few ways they now have of doing so. They have made a calculation which leaves no room for doubt and they think we are obliged to help them. Luckily for us, they cannot - yet - make us vaccinate our young. I bet they wish they could, but in the meantime they are forcing the parents of Britain into a deeply unpleasant and completely needless dilemma which may have the opposite effect to the one they intend. If there is a measles epidemic in this country, the rigid minds of the Health Department will have to share the blame for it. ‘

That statement is so perverse, I hardly know how to respond. There is a measles epidemic in this country. It was caused by the rigid minds of one idiot doctor and dozens of idiot journalists.

I still think that, given the state of knowledge when this was written, this is a reasonable summary of the case. I was the only journalist to track the measles deaths in Dublin and find out the true circumstances from the Irish authorities. This would have been impossible in Britain, where my requests for such information on a measles death was brusquely refused, on the spurious grounds of patient confidentiality. I never sought to identify anyone so that cannot be the reason. It is useful to recall that Andrew Wakefield’s original paper in ‘The Lancet’, suggesting that the MMR (introduced in 1988) might have risks, had been published in February 1998, almost three years before I wrote the article. The concerns about the safety of the MMR had already taken hold in the public mind long before I ever uttered a public word about it.

But by the time you wrote, the fears over MMR had already been put to rest. You could (and should) have uttered your public words in favour of vaccination.

In fact, they go back further than the famous press conference which began the controversy. Using an electronic library database, I found that fears over the MMR being linked with autism and bowel disease were raised in newspaper reports in March 1994, January 1996, November 1996, June 1997 and July 1997. In 1992, two of the original MMR vaccines had been withdrawn because of a separate concern over the safety of the mumps component.

Yep. That's what we do if, despite our best efforts, we later discover that vaccines are dangerous or do more harm than good.

I am not going to attempt to go into the rights and wrongs of this controversy now. I can only say that it seemed to me that some legitimate concerns had been raised, and that parents were entitled to be worried. Some personal experiences of mine have made me worry about all claims of total safety for vaccines.

No scientist would ever claim total safety for anything. Your personal experiences are irrelevant. The safety of vaccines is established by the large scale collection of evidence.

Nor is it just personal experience, nor the ghastly experience of Heather Edwards and her son Joshua, which I have often written about, and which haunts me to this day (Joshua had severe reactions after *both* his MMR injections, suffering both regressive autism and grave bowel problems. No, this doesn't prove anything. But it is surely worrying).

What's worrying is that a supposedly intelligent journalist can commit such an obvious case of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. I am very sorry about Joshua, but the epidemiological evidence clearly establishes that he did not develop his conditions as a result of his jabs.

As I noted in July 2007, ‘ I am hugely grateful to Vivienne Parry, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises the Government on the controversial MMR injection, for finally explaining the true attitude of the authorities: “There's a small risk with all vaccines,” she says. “No one has ever said that any vaccine is completely without side-effects.” “But we have to decide whether the benefits outweigh the risks. If we had measles, it would kill lots of children. If you have a vaccine, it will damage some children, but a very small number.” ‘ As I wrote then: ’It's not really true about measles, a rather minor risk to a healthy child in an advanced country. But what a refreshing change this candour is from the woodenheaded assertions by the medical establishment that the MMR jab is proven to be completely safe.’ The problem here is that governments may regard the ‘small number’ who are damaged as unimportant. But the individuals who are personally and directly affected see it in a very different way.

See above. The benefits of MMR vastly outweigh any risk - for each individual child as well as for the child population as a whole.

I don’t think I have ever met or communicated directly with Andrew Wakefield, though I have corresponded with many people, whose children suffered from bowel complaints and regressive autism, who did meet him and who had and continue to have a high opinion of him as a doctor and a man. I note that many modern accounts of the controversy describe his actions as ‘fraudulent’ or ‘false’ or as a ‘hoax’, suggesting a deliberate attempt to deceive. I don’t personally think this is fair.

Andrew Wakefield's dishonesty has been established beyond any reasonable doubt.

Another doctor ( I won’t name her in case it brings extra trouble to her) who dared to sympathise with worried parents, and whom I believe to be a fine and ethical professional, was also dragged before the General Medical Council for daring to give evidence on behalf of such worried parents. I am glad to say that she was cleared, but not until after she had been put through a professional and emotional ordeal which would have crushed many people.

One of the things which always made me sympathise with the worried parents was the intolerant fury of the pro-MMR campaign, which to this day exaggerates the dangers of measles. The prevalence and dangers of this disease (grave among malnourished people without access to clean water) had already fallen precipitately before the first vaccine was introduced in 1968. Annual Measles deaths in in England and Wales ranged between about 9,000 a year and 12,000 a year before the First World War, rose to a peak of nearly 17,000 in the harshest period of the war (during, and perhaps caused by, the now-forgotten severe food shortages of that period) , fell after the war, at one stage to fewer than 3,000, then rising again to nearly 6,000 before beginning a long, jagged fall to around 100, a level reached in the mid-1950s 13 years before the introduction of any vaccine at all. During the first 60 years of the century, its victims fell from more than 300 deaths per year per million to about two per million. (Older figures show a far higher death rate in the 1840s – 700 per year per million; and again in the 1880s – 600 per year per million. There is a data gap in the 1890s In the five years immediately before the first vaccine, deaths were as follows : 1962:39; 1963:166; 1964:73; 1965:115; 1966:80; 1967:99; 1968:51. To give an indication of the range of possible variations in those times, deaths in 1956 were at 30, while the previous year there had been 176 and in 1957 there were 96, and in 1958, 49. The width of the variation did narrow after 1968, but not vastly. Nor can we be sure that the vaccine was responsible, or wholly responsible, for the subsequent continuing fall in the number of deaths to zero or very near zero, which has been maintained since then. General standards of housing, nutrition and public health were all continuing to rise in that period, which saw the final removal of some of the worst slums. Deaths in subsequent years fell even lower, falling to 6 in 1979. This is obviously an advance. But a) it is really quite small compared with the changes wrought by better nutrition, housing conditions and hygiene achieved in the previous 60 years. And b) it is very hard to say whether it is attributable to the vaccine, or to the continuing improvements in public health which had already had so much effect.

This line of argument makes no sense whatsoever. Yes deaths were reduced by better living conditions. Now we have better living conditions, the only way to reduce deaths further is by vaccination. It is not hard to say what is attributable to the vaccine. Epidemiologists do this for a living. The vaccine (properly deployed) prevents people getting measles at all. If nobody gets measles, nobody dies from or is disabled by measles. The only argument for not vaccinating would be if vaccination cause more harn than good. It doesn't.

Let us all hope and pray that there are no deaths or serious illness as a result of the current measles outbreak.

Indeed! At least, if there is death or serious illness, those of us in the "intolerant orthodoxy" will at least be able to sleep at night knowing we did our best. Will you?

As always, the subject is illuminated more by thought and facts than by dogma and emotion, though it is, in my view, kind to respect the fears of others, and foolish to ignore them.

Even when the fears of others are based on dogma and emotion?

If you want accurate information about medical science and the sorry tale of Dr Wakefield and the MMR scare, I can only suggest that you stop reading the Daily Mail and start reading Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.

PS I've just been taken to task on Twitter for not citing references (other than Ben's book above). I really wanted to avoid rehearsing debates about the detailed scientific evidence because those debates have all been had and the outcome is clear. I wanted to restrict myself to the question of how the advice was derived from the science and how science works. I have, however, alluded to factual evidence concerning the merits of MMR versus single vaccines. If you dispute any of my claims, I would direct you to Public Health England: Why is MMR preferable to single vaccines?. If you don't accept what they have to say then you'll have to start reading the primary literature.

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Terrific Blog Mr Hitchens. I have some points about single vaccinations which seem to have been suppressed within press articles.
Single vaccinations for measles, had been in use for 30 years before the Wakefield et al Lancet article in 1998, (and 20 years before ithe introduction of MMR vaccine in 1988). This vaccine was well trusted and had a good safety record, as did the single rubella vaccine introduced for 12 year old girls only, a few years after the single measles vaccine. Again, very few problems. Mumps vaccine was considered unnecessary in those days:-

"There was no need to introduce routine vaccination against mumps because complications from the disease were rare." JCVI Minutes 11th December 1974

The British National Formulary (BNF) 1985 and 1986 stated:- “Since Mumps and its complications are very rarely serious , there is little indication for the routine use of mumps vaccine”

The data now gathered from some 100 years of mutation research in general and 70 years of mutation breeding in particular enable scientists to draw conclusions regarding the ability of mutations to produce new species. After examining the evidence, Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, a scientist from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Germany, concluded: “Mutations cannot transform an original species [of plant or animal] into an entirely new one. This conclusion agrees with all the experiences and results of mutation research of the 20th century taken together as well as with the laws of probability.”

So, can mutations cause one species to evolve into a completely new kind of creature? The evidence answers no! Lönnig’s research has led him to the conclusion that “properly defined species have real boundaries that cannot be abolished or transgressed by accidental mutations.”

If highly trained scientists are unable to produce new species by artificially inducing and selecting favorable mutations, is it likely that an unintelligent process (no matter how much time it has) would do a better job? If research shows that mutations cannot transform an original species into an entirely new one, then how, exactly, was macroevolution supposed to have taken place?

A good idea. I really have no idea what you are talking about. An organism doesn't 'learn' anything and adapt. If a physiological change favours survival in the new environment then an adaption can be said to have taken place in a manner of speaking, but it is not a learning process.

"It is certainly NOT science (evolution). Coming to a conclusion first and then desperately trying to find the evidence to fit the theory. None of the available evidence fits the theory (unless you smash the "square" evidence into the "round hole" theory) so you make up phrases and ideas that sound clever but bear no resemblance to logic or science whatsoever."

Mr Benson, sir, if the above is how you view the science of evolution by natural selection then we have no conversation. I simply can't get into yet another round of refutations of this nonsense. Sorry sir. You need to acqaint yourself with some proper science on the subject. The public libraries and bookshops are groaning with it. I urge you to stay away from 'creation science' literature. It is palpable nonsense. You won't learn anything of value.

"The quote from David M Raup is well known. It is routinely fastened upon by creationists"

Firstly, I am not a creationist. Secondly, whether you like it or not, it was an evolutionary paleontologist that made that statement. Do you disagree with his statement?

"Suzan Maur is a well known anti-evolution journalist."

The quote was from evolutionary biologist Stuart Newman. Do you disagree with his statement?

"That's a done deal. The science is now in the details, the mopping up."

It is NOT a done deal.

It is certainly NOT science. Coming to a conclusion first and then desperately trying to find the evidence to fit the theory. None of the available evidence fits the theory (unless you smash the "square" evidence into the "round hole" theory) so you make up phrases and ideas that sound clever but bear no resemblance to logic or science whatsoever.

Anyway, regarding your theory on mutations ...

In his book The Wellsprings of Life, science writer Isaac Asimov admitted: “Most mutations are for the worse.” However, he then asserted: “In the long run, to be sure, mutations make the course of evolution move onward and upward.” But do they? Would any process that resulted in harm more than 999 times out of 1,000 be considered beneficial?

Geneticist Dobzhansky once said, in his book Heredity and the Nature of Man, 1964, p. 126, : “An accident, a random change, in any delicate mechanism can hardly be expected to improve it. Poking a stick into the machinery of one’s watch or one’s radio set will seldom make it work better.”

Even if all mutations were beneficial, could they produce anything new? No, they could not. A mutation could only result in a variation of a trait that is already there. It provides variety, but never anything new.

The World Book Encyclopedia gives an example of what might happen with a beneficial mutation: “A plant in a dry area might have a mutant gene that causes it to grow larger and stronger roots. The plant would have a better chance of survival than others of its species because its roots could absorb more water.” But has anything new appeared? No.

"The 'mind' part is the issue isn't it ? For if you account for the 'random' part it to points to a 'response' or 'adaptation' to any number of changing environments ; which is a sign of intelligence by any objective criteria"

The randomly changing organism does not 'respond' to changing environments as if anticipating them. The changing environment favours those randomly changed organisms best suited to the new conditions over organisms not randomly changed to suit the new conditions. There is no mind or intelligence involved. Evolution does not anticipate. It is not forward-looking.

"Explanations of human organs, for example, invariably make use of teleological, or end driven or purposeful, language. It generally assumed by biologists that this language can be cashed-out in non-teleological terms"

It's absurd. I once read a comment on amazon for a book I was possibly going to buy, fuming at the author's use of "facilitated variation". What sort of mindset (assuming there is such thing as a mind) thinks like this ?

"Recombinant parental chromosomal DNA together with new chromosome pairing in the fertilised cell will effect changes in the physiology of the offspring. Copying errors will contribute to the changes. External sources, both particulate and radiative, can also produce mutation, usually damaging.Occasionally it isn't damaging and the mutation goes on to effect change that will ultimately benefit the organism through natural selection."

My version :

"So a male and female get together, have a baby, which shares its parents' DNA, but develops an individual phenotype which if it is lucky will enhance its chance of survival." What's 'mindless' or 'random' about this process ?

The 'mind' part is the issue isn't it ? For if you account for the 'random' part it to points to a 'response' or 'adaptation' to any number of changing environments ; which is a sign of intelligence by any objective criteria. And we all know that any sign of sentient language with regards to this sacred cow is strictly verboten.

I've no religious drum to beat, nor am I trying to lay the theory of evolution (or abiogenesis) at the feet of some supernatural entity or persuade anyone otherwise. But because I have the temerity to think that the theory is full of holes, it doesn't mean I don't understand the theory you support. And if by now you don't understand what I mean by "randomness of the gaps", or "how would you test the theory?" ; then I suggest it is you sir that needs to read and expand your library somewhat.

Paulus M in your post of 20 April 2013 at 11:49 AM, you seem to allude to any interesting point. That is, you mention that " the use of the words "selection" and "preferential" infers a conscious based descision". Explanations of human organs, for example, invariably make use of teleological, or end driven or purposeful, language. It generally assumed by biologists that this language can be cashed-out in non-teleological terms; however, it is a contentious issue whether this can be done coherently, and, for example, we can ever explain the evolution and functioning of the heart or the kidneys, or even DNA (terms like information abound in explanations of DNA), in language devoid of teleological implications.

I lack the technical knowledge of comment much further, but it is an interesting topic and one to which I hope to devote some study to one day.

"Firstly, Mr P, please can you cut out the self-righteous, "I'm smarter than you" comments."

You said this Mr Benson....

"There is no consensus: there is no fossil evidence that proves the theory; there is no DNA evidence that proves Darwin's 'Tree of Life' theory; there is no evidence that proves the existence of 'ape men'."

This statement is evidence to me of the purest ignorance of the theory of evolution by natural selection. It suggests to me, Mr Benson, that whatever reading you have done on the subject, you haven't understood anything. Therefore once again I urge you to acquaint yourself more properly with the subject matter prior to going into print with absurdities such as the above above in all demonstrative surety. Rudeness was the furthest thing from my mind in responding, but I think I was entitled to a firm rebuttal.

The quote from David M Raup is well known. It is routinely fastened upon by creationists because it suits their purpose. Evolutionary science which does not suit the creationist purpose is of course summarily discarded.

Suzan Maur is a well known anti-evolution journalist.

The other biologists you quote simply affirm that there is still much work to be done in understanding the mechanisms of natural selection, and about which there is much diversity of opinion among scientists working in this field. No reputable scientist, however, doing proper science denies evolution as the principle of biological development. That's a done deal. The science is now in the details, the mopping up.

" Considering that it is 'random mutation' which forms the central plank of the theory, why aren't there more experiments to prove this ? How would you test this?"

I don't know what it is you are trying to say. Thousands of experiment have been done, and are being done as we speak. The results have been published and continue to be published. Recombinant parental chromosomal DNA together with new chromosome pairing in the fertilised cell will effect changes in the physiology of the offspring. Copying errors will contribute to the changes. External sources, both particulate and radiative, can also produce mutation, usually damaging. Occasionally it isn't damaging and the mutation goes on to effect change that will ultimately benefit the organism through natural selection.

"But you state the environment plays no part in the mutations. So, which is it to be ? Randomness of the gaps ?"

Insofar as cosmic radiation may effect gene mutation the environment is involved, but this is not the same as the environment in which the living organism competes for survival, a survival which may be enhanced should any of the mutated genes give rise to a physiology more condicive to survival in that environment.

I have no idea what "randomness of the gaps" means.

Recommended popular reading: DNA by James D Watson. ISBN 0-375-41546-7

I'm sure it is common knowledge. It would also be proper scientific practice to account for any random variables which appear to have deviated from the 'known' rules of physics and chemistry. My own limited knowledge of the sciences is restricted to A Level Human Biology, and a year of Microbiology (Food) at university over twenty years ago. I've forgotton about much of the finer subject details since I never continued on that career path, but I never forgot about the important details relating to testing and experiments. If there was any deviation from the expected results, I would have to indentify the source of the change. It would have been ludicrous to simply accept it just as a 'random' event. Considering that it is 'random mutation' which forms the central plank of the theory, why aren't there more experiments to prove this ? How would you test this ?

You have correctly identified that cosmic rays have been identified as an agent/cause which can influence 'some' mutations, which is an enviromental factor is it not ? Here you've accounted for what previously might have been termed 'random', but the crucial point is that it was the organism which 'responded' to that external change, whether or not it is detrimental or advantageous. But you state the environment plays no part in the mutations. So, which is it to be ? Randomness of the gaps ?

"Please acquaint yourself with enough knowledge to sustain intelligent debate and I would be happy to accomodate you. Thanks."

Firstly, Mr P, please can you cut out the self-righteous, "I'm smarter than you" comments. You remind me of some other arrogant person who posts here under numerous guises.

In Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, “Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology,” by evolutionary paleontologist David M. Raup, January 1979, p. 23, he writes: “Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record.”

In an interview (Archaeology, “The Origin of Form Was Abrupt Not Gradual,” by Suzan Mazur, October 11, 2008) evolutionary biologist Stuart Newman discussed the need for a new theory of evolution that could explain the sudden appearance of novel forms of life. He said: “The Darwinian mechanism that’s used to explain all evolutionary change will be relegated, I believe, to being just one of several mechanisms—maybe not even the most important when it comes to understanding macroevolution, the evolution of major transitions in body type.”

Regarding the time spans that separate many of these fossils, zoologist Henry Gee says in Search of Deep Time—Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life, 1999, p. 23: “The intervals of time that separate the fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definite about their possible connection through ancestry and descent.”

In Biology and Philosophy, “The Concept of Monophyly: A Speculative Essay,” by biologist Malcolm S. Gordon, 1999, biologist Malcolm S. Gordon states that the fossils found represent only a small, “possibly quite unrepresentative, sample of the biodiversity that existed in these groups at those times ... There is no way of knowing to what extent, if at all, those specific organisms were relevant to later developments, or what their relationships might have been to each other.”

There is no consensus, no fossil evidence that proves this 'factual' theory.

It is common knowledge in molecular biology and genetics. DNA mutation mosty takes place through random copying errors, or other external factors such as the impacts of cosmic ray particles, with which we are surrounded all the time.

Significant changes also can be generated during the reproduction cycle when DNA recombination occurs, after which the new sets of recombined male and female chromosomes come together. Changes thus 'inherited' may or may not enhance survival in the inherently hostile world outside. Those which do survive will be passed on to subsequent generations, together with subsequent changes in their turn which may further enhance survival.

In a sense you are evolving all the time in ordinary life. You are getting older and your DNA copying errors are becoming significant. Ultimately your immune system will be overwhelmed and a vital organ will fail. You will have 'died of old age'. This in a soundbite is the DNA damage theory of aging, as yet only a theory and a research-in-progress.

"Mutations are random. If an organism is already well adapted to its environment then most mutations will be detrimental. Some will be beneficial and these are preferentially passed to the next generation and hence become more numerous in the population. This is the selection part, which makes the overall process non-random."

How do you know what is random and what isn't ? Would you agree that the use of the words "selection" and "preferential" infers a conscious based descision ? If I understand you correctly, you are saying is that NOTHING at all within the organism influences these changes, but when adapted following these events (passing on the genes) they then become "non-random" ; sort of like "order out of chaos". So if the organism was to mutate once again, it could only do so by your account if it were to descend into a random state.

You also say most mutations (once the organism is adapted ) then become detrimental, so would you consider known conditions like Down's, Cystic Fibrosis etc, as examples of mutations as having gone wrong ; and who decides what is and what isn't wrong ? And if you consider these conditions detrimental, then why are they also passed on if "preference" is what drives the evolutionary process ?

"... assuming the new enviroment is the catalyst which prompted this change and result ?"

The new environment does not prompt change. It is not a catalyst. The new environment might favour a physiological change brought about by random gene mutation and afford the changed life - from bacteria to humans - a better chance of survival in the natural economy, so to speak.

Sir, it is clear that you don't really understand the mechanisms of evolution by natural selection. I urge you to acquaint yourself with the many popular works in print on this subject.

Depictions in textbooks and museums of so-called ancestors of humans are often shown with specific facial features, skin colour, and amount of hair. These depictions usually show the older “ancestors” with monkeylike features and the ones supposedly closer to humans with more humanlike facial features, skin tone, and hair.

Can scientists reliably reconstruct such features based on fossilized remains that they find?

No. In 2003, forensics expert Carl N. Stephan, of the Department of Anatomical Sciences, The University of Adelaide, wrote: “The faces of earlier human ancestors cannot be objectively constructed or tested.” He says that attempts to do so based on modern apes “are likely to be heavily biased, grossly inaccurate, and invalid.” His conclusion? “Any facial ‘reconstructions’ of earlier hominids are likely to be misleading.” - Science and Justice, Vol. 43, No. 4, (2003) section, Forensic Anthropology, “Anthropological Facial ‘Reconstruction’—Recognizing the Fallacies, ‘Unembracing’ the Errors, and Realizing Method Limits,” by C. N. Stephan, p. 195.

There is no consensus, no evidence that proves the existence of 'ape men'.

So natural selection's result is a pointless selection. If that is the case, then why have certain creatures evolved so as to avoid being deselected ? Why bother with a pointless mutation if the process isn't intended to provide the recipient advantageous features to withstand the environment ; assuming the new enviroment is the catalyst which prompted this change and result ?

Paulus M asks: “Isn't the point of natural selection, that the mutations occur so as to be advantageous to the organism/animal to increase its chance of survival?”

Mutations are random. If an organism is already well adapted to its environment then most mutations will be detrimental. Some will be beneficial and these are preferentially passed to the next generation and hence become more numerous in the population. This is the selection part, which makes the overall process non-random.

Evolution is therefore a process of trial and error conducted over hundreds of millions of years. All that is required for a mutation to be selected is that it provides an advantage to its owner. It does not have to be elegant or even efficient – merely advantageous. This is how “idiotic designs” become incorporated into nature. There is no guiding intelligence that recognises the glaring mistake in running the optic nerve in front of the retina. If there were we would not see such morphology and the ID brigade would at least have some firm ground to stand on. As it is, they do not.

"Isn't the point of natural selection, that the mutations occur so as to be advantageous to the organism/animal to increase its chance of survival ?"

Natural selection doesn't have a 'point'. It has a result. Mutations don't occur "so as to be advantageous to the organism". Advantage may accrue to the organism so mutated if its environment favours such mutation. Evolution is not forward-looking.

William Benson: "there is no fossil evidence that proves the theory" [of evolution]

What, pray tell, are those hominin fossils we find? They are apes (as are we), they are older than any human fossils we find. They are not the remains of humans, but they are more like humans than any other animal on the planet.

What are they, Mr Benson, if they are not evidence for evolution? Evidence planted by God to merely make it appear exactly as if evolution has taken place?

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